What if... ?

[digitalpress]

Let me hear you write the revisionist history following this "what if... ?" scenario. Ready?

It's 1988 and Nintendo has a fabulous idea. Just as their 8-bit NES system is seeing it's dusk, the dawn of a new era approaches. Except that it ISN'T the Game Boy as our history books detail. The guy who spoke up about a handheld system called in sick that day (bad sushi) and though this idea was pretty much at the back of everyone's mind, the spark to trigger it was missing.

So instead, the design team begins working on a way to make the NES portable and in two weeks the feasibility study shows that it's too expensive. Nintendo puts some additional resources on the Super NES instead.

Now it's your turn.

What if Game Boy was never released?

[hamburgler]

Potable game systems like game gear wouldn't have been great and portable games would be bad.

[Dobie]

Tetris certainly wouldn't have been as huge of a game. It still may have been very popular, but I don't think it would have been the household word it has become. In fact, Nintendo never would have gotten the rights to Tetris to begin with, as they only went to Russia to negotiate the rights to the handheld version, and ended up with the whole shebang instead.

So no interesting history between Tengen and Nintendo, either. At least not interesting history involving Tetris.

[Starcade]

Nintendo would have lost out on alot of money they didnt know they COULD have had. The GB Player never would have released.

[YoshiM]

In this scenario, would Nintendo have gotten its hands on all rights to Tetris? Lets assume no-they just got the home console rights. What if Atari got those rights? This is what I could have seen:

Atari decides to come out with the Lynx (as per history) as the front runner to the handheld market (as opposed to Nintendo, who in this scenario did not come out with the Game Boy). They get their hands on Tetris for handheld and thus release it as a pack-in (instead of California Games). System probably would not have been as successful as say the GB was (mainly due to price and battery life) but this then opens the door for other color handhelds whose life on the market would have been extended...

Until Nintendo decided to get on the ball and jump into the fray. This would probably have resulted in a form of GBC before 1998 (when the GBC came out in reality). As everyone and their uncle had already blazed the trail of color handhelds, Nintendo would have researched the existing technology and come up with something technically better. Perhaps a backlit GBC?

The world may never know...

[IGotTheDot]

I would not be playing Castlevania 1,2 and 3 for 4 hours each night.

[Qixmaster]

no gameboy = no super gameboy :( . I Don't know where i would be without fortiefied zone on my 27 inch tv... it haunts me to think about the possibilities.

[slurpeepoop]

Maybe in this aternate universe, the TurboExpress would have gotten its due.